Brown River Queen cover art

Friday, May 6, 2011

Belfast Buffoonery, Part II: Councils Without Character

Poor Lennox. His story gets sadder and sadder with each new development.

For those of you unfamiliar with the story, you can catch up by reading here. The short version is this -- Lennox is a big black dog who is NOT a pit bull. Pit bulls are prohibited in Belfast. This shouldn't be a problem since, as I said, Lennox isn't a pit bull. He had a license granted by the Belfast City Council. He had vet records. He had a lifetime of good behavior. And, as I stated, Lennox isn't a pit bull at all, so there was no reason to seize him.

Sadly, such leaps of logic are simply too formidable for the Belfast City Council and their duly-appointed dog abusers, the Belfast City Council Dog Wardens (who shall be referred to hereafter by their more commonly known name, The Complete and Utter Worthless BASTARDS). A year ago, the Dog Wardens, aka the Mouth-Breathing Inbred Cone-Headed Simpletons, mis-read a warrant and went to the wrong freaking house and grabbed poor Lennox, who is big and black and must therefore in the eyes of Belfastian law be a pit bull.

Remind me never to travel to Belfast. Not that I plan to. Aside from being Europe's biggest exporter of goiters and halitosis, Belfast's only other claims to fame are its open sewers and proliferation of readily-available child pornography. The Romans once conquered Bronze-Age Belfast, only to return it to its barbarian inhabitants because, as Plutarch put it, '...seriously, there's no hope for the place or those furry, nasty little people. We tried burning it but the stench made vultures gag. What they do to goats...no, I can't describe it, let's move on."

After being seized by the Dog Wardens, or as they are known to Interpol 'the suspects in a number of ongoing bestiality investigations,' Lennox was kept, for a year, in a tiny little enclosure filled with his own feces.

Because in Belfast, apparently, being surrounded by your own body wastes is known as 'what, is there a problem?'

Finally, poor Lennox had his day in court. DNA evidence proved he wasn't a pit bull. His spotless record of good behavior was entered into evidence. The Council's reasons for seizing him boiled down to 'look how black he is.'

If you're new to this case, predict the outcome of that hearing. No evidence of wrongdoing. Clear evidence Lennox isn't a prohibited breed. Wrongful seizure. Appalling standards of care.

You'd think Lennox would be returned to his home that day, wouldn't you?

And you'd be right. Right, that is, if the hearing was held anywhere but merry old Belfast, where parents have been first cousins since the dawn of time itself.

No, in a stunning decision seemingly designed to prove that Belfastian judges simply won't be bound by mere facts when there's plenty of ill-will to go around, Judge Ken Nixon sentenced Lennox to death, for the crime of being big and black and born in Belfast.

Way to go, Judge Nixon! What's next for your amazing display of jurisprudence? Going to mandate that sparrows are wyverns, and must be harpooned on sight? Thinking about passing an ordinance requiring a dozen kittens to be stomped on the courthouse steps every Arbor Day?

I'll just bet you are. Because that's how things are done in Belfast, and you don't need any uppity foreigners telling you how to slaughter your own innocent animals.

So, after His Lack of Honor rendered his decision and then toddled off to the nearest pet store to torture a Schnauzer with a pointed stick, Lennox's owners appealed the decision.

Amazingly, the court granted them an appeal. I'm sure this was a mistake, because to the clerks in the Belfast Courthouse all those word-things on the forms look pretty much the same. Belfast does rank 1,265,487, 365,546th in literacy, which is in itself quite an accomplishment since doing so required them to be ranked among not just Earth for twenty-seven other inhabited planets, including one populated entirely by beings who use mud for brains.

The appeal was set for May 4. I had high hopes that perhaps a judge who did not require the services of the bailiff to wipe drool from his chin would be presiding.

Hoping for even the least smidgeon of competence among the City Council or courts of Belfast, though, is a fool's errand.

The appointed time came and went. Lennox's family was there.

The Belfast City Council and their minions simply elected not to show up.

That's right. They skipped the proceedings entirely.

Now, even in countries where the officials sport necklaces made of human teeth, that would mean an automatic loss for the Belfast City Council and the Dog Wardens.

But not in Belfast. Oh no. In Belfast, the failure of the prosecution to stumble from the pub to the courtroom gets you nothing but a 'ere, what's all this, then?' and a big wet sneeze.

So poor Lennox is still locked in his cage. His family is still in limbo.

And in Belfast, this is what passes for law and compassion and justice.

Screw you, Belfast. Plutarch had it right. You're a nasty, obnoxious bunch of sadistic little puppy-stranglers, from your City Council to your goose-stepping Dog Wardens to your pox-ridden courts. I'd wish all manner of pestilence and plague upon you, if I thought the onset of such could even be detected amid the filth and decay that you call your disgusting little city.

Not one of your elected officials has a shred of decency. Which shouldn't come as a surprise, considering your actions in the past. One can't expect too much from the descendants of the creatures Plutarch named 'Europe's version of the dung-sucking manure monkey.'